I have taken on as CM a KBS Drama Specials series which was subtitled a long time ago, when the CM was viki. It is the Unexpected-Life Drama Specials. While editing the subtitles, something seemed confusing, so I went to youtube (where KBS has all their Drama Specials available, and well translated into English) to check what their version is, in hopes it clarified the meaning.
To my horror, I found that the viki subtitler had faithfully copied all the subtitles from YT, including the formatting (/- instead of break in the dialogues) that I had painstakingly changed.
I checked ep.1 and ep.9 so far and they are both copied word by word from YT.
ep.1 Why I’m getting married here and on YT
ep.3 Dreaming Man here and on YT
ep.9 Stone Day here and on YT
The only difference you might see is in the subs I edited.
What is even more shocking is that on the person’s profile there is a badge saying s/he is Viki “staff”.
What can I do now? It’s hours and hours of video. Do I keep quiet about it?
By the way, this user has also subtitled on another Drama Special collection (Romantic Comedy Drama Specials) but I was just a subber, not a CM there.
It may very well be that the person uploading the videos and subtitles on YT is the same person that “translated” on Viki. You will never know unless you ask them directly. Although he/she doesn’t own rights for the video, they might own the subtitles. At which point, whether the subs are on Viki or YT, it doesn’t matter.
Did the same user translate the entire series, or just parts of it? Are all subs from YT the same as on Viki?
Old projects have a lot of (to us now) weird combos and customs in translating.
No, KBS translates all of its drama specials on youtube, and they are excellent translations usually.
The subs are exactly the same - I haven’t checked the whole hour-long episode but randomly here and there, and every time it was exactly the same.
And yes, she has translated quite a few episodes of the series. He/she has a total of a little more of 3000 subs - probably to become QC?
I didn’t think to check till now, I happened to see this by coincidence. Maybe I should. All the Drama Specials are also on YT, so it would be easy to find them.
Well, so far I checked n.1 and n.10 and they both match with YT (except for the parts I edited).
Can you see who the subber is? Sometimes old Kdrama/ Kmovies came with softsubs so it is possible that the subs are provided by KBS. Maybe you can contact Viki about it.
I also have a channel where the softsubs where provided but I wasn’t allowd to edit them as the content owner didn’t want them to be edited.
@irmar
In several instances when the drama was older, it came with the English subs produced by the broadcaster or someone else before viki got the license. Sometimes viki staff asked the volunteer staff it they wanted the viki tech staff to upload the video with the pre-existing subs and we were free to edit or we could sub everything from raw ourselves And in one instance viki got the director’s cut but they had the as broadcast subs so the viki staff couldn’t sync the pre-existing subs with the video and gave the volunteers the subs to do with as we wished (re-sub or copy and paste in the appropriate places).
In several instances both dramafever and viki must have gotten the videos and subs from the same source – because dramafever also purchased licenses for a lot of “older” titles too so I saw the viki version and the dramafever versions are identical. Viki acquired soompitv which had bought crunchroll’s library of kdrama. So there might not necessarily be plagiarizing going on here but purchases from the same source.
This is very reassuring, so thanks for explaining. But how do I know which is the case? I wish somebody could tell us. What is a bit puzzling is that this user is actually credited with the subs on her profile.
Even the staffer who uploads the HD version sometimes puts in a one liner and gets a credit on his page. I think if the drama is an older one it is a good assumption that viki also got the subs as part of the deal.
Hi, I didn’t know where to write this, so i’m just hoping you could help me. I’m living in Korea, but it doesn’t let me watch anything that is Korean, I would love if u can help with this because is getting annoying and I love watching my dramas in here. Thank You (hope you can do something).
